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Ragged Knight
The Ragged Knight is a Bloodthirster of Khorne born during the Terran Middle Ages from an ancient atrocity. The Ragged Knight was later bound and used by the Renegade Thousand Sons Chaos Sorcerer Iskandar Khayon as a weapon against the Emperor's Children during the Legion Wars of the 31st Millennium that transformed the Sons of Horus into the Black Legion. History Origin The Ragged Knight emerged millennia ago on Terra during the European Middle Ages which was dimly remembered in the Age of the Imperium as the "Steel Era" of Old Earth's history. Iskandar Khayon would later relate the tale that a powerful holy man named Innocent had demanded that the Karthur people of the land of Gawl, also called the Frankish Empire, be eradicated as an affront to his religion. Innocent proclaimed that any knights who took up this crusade against the Karthur would find all their sins before their god forgiven. Thousands of warriors responded to Innocent's call and laid siege in Gawl to the fortress of Albajensia. Knowing that all their sins were already forgiven, the crusaders ultimately broke through the Karthur's defences. When the city had fallen, its survivors were brought before Innocent. Since it was impossible to tell the heretics from the true followers of Innocent's faith by sight, he simply ordered all of the men, women and children within massacred before burning the entire edifice to the ground. The hate, fear, rage and terrible sense of betrayal that bled from the people of Albajensia as they died into the local Warpspace gave birth to a potent new Greater Daemon in the Immaterium that was stronger than many of its fellow Bloodthirsters -- the Ragged Knight. Legion Wars The Black Legion Sorcerer Iskandar Khayon, always referred to as "Soulweaver" by the daemon, proved able to bind the Ragged Knight to his service, trapping its essence within one of the leatherbound tarot cards he always carried. Though the daemon had been entered into his service through a pact, it was a rebellious entity that Khayon never trusted. Khayon's tutelary daemon, Gyre, was the one who kept it in check and in service to the Sorcerer. During the Legion Wars in the Eye of Terror that followed the defeat of the forces of Chaos at the Siege of Terra, the Emperor's Children Legion's 16th, 40th, and 51st Companies attacked His Chosen Son, a Space Hulk that was serving as a meeting ground for Khayon, the Sons of Horus Captain and Possessed Chaos Space Marine Falkus Kibre and the Renegade World Eater Lheorvine Ukris. The three had met as part of their joint search to find Ezekyle Abaddon. With Abaddon to lead them, they hoped to restore the XVI Legion to its former glory after the death of Horus. To defend himself from the Emperor's Children's assault, Khayon summoned the Ragged Knight to his side. The Greater Daemon killed eighteen Emperor's Children Heretic Astartes in only a few solar seconds, and then proceeded to build a throne for itself from four of their corpses after consuming the others. At Kayon's command it fought Telemachon Lyras, a former member of the Sons of Horus who had fallen to the service of Slaanesh and now was the second in command of the Emperor's Children warband that has truck at the His Chosen Son. Lyras, a powerful swordsman, was able to hold off the daemon up until the point that one of his blows succeeded in penetrating the entity's physical body. The burning viscera that sprayed from the wound incapacitated Lyras. As Lyras fell, the Ragged Knight turned its wrath on Khayon, deciding to take the opportunity to be freed from its unwelcome service. Tired of the Ragged Knight's unreliability, the Sorcerer succeeded in banishing the creature back to the Warp. Appearance The Ragged Knight's skin is the bleeding red charcoal of scorched flesh, like the families who burned in their homes during the siege of Albajensia. Its armour is a fire-blackened mockery of the mail worn by the knights whose treachery gave it birth. It carries a sword, just as those butchering knights carried swords, but inscribed with runic curses heralding the glory of the Blood God. The fire that lit the horizon as the doomed city blazed burns behind the Ragged Knight's eyes, and each of its exhaled breaths is the echo of ten thousand dying screams. Trivia The story told by Iskandar Khayon about the origins of the Ragged Knight actually correspond to the real world Albigensian Crusade's first major action, the Massacre at Béziers, which unfolded on 22 July 1209 AD (055.209.M2 Imperial Calendar). The holy man Innocent is actually Pope Innocent III who called the crusade against the Roman Catholic heretics in southern France known as the Cathars. The quote "Kill them all. Our God will know who is loyal," which Khayon attributed to the holy man Innocent in his recounting of the tale, is historically attributed to Innocent III's papal legate and Cistercian abbot Arnaud Amalric. Sources *''The Talon of Horus'' (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Part I, Chapter IV Category:R Category:Chaos Category:Chaos Characters Category:Characters Category:Daemons